Notre Dame has shot 32.6% from behind the arc this season, ranking them 241st in the country.

The Irish shot 11-23 behind the arc this afternoon to roll to an easy victory over your Marquette Golden Eagles. That's 47.8% for the game. Pat Connaughton was the worst offender, making 5 of his 8 three ball attempts.

Darius Johnson-Odom and Vander Blue tied for a team high for Marquette with 12 points.

We'll have a report live from Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center coming up once Warrior Brad and Mr. Kensington manage to escape from Indiana, but until then, your thoughts on the game are welcome in the comments section below.

Starters, stats, and beer, if you'd be so kind as to jump.

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Saturday means college basketball all over your cable guide, and we're here to provide space for you to discuss the events of the day!

Things get started with College GameDay coming to us live from Columbia, Missouri with a feature game between #4/4 Missouri hosting #8/8 Kansas. From there we get a day with 12 ranked teams playing games on the road. We might be in for a heck of a newsworthy day.

Here's the games that are getting a national broadcast on various networks. All times are Central, as usual. If you find a barnburner on a local channel, be sure to let us all know about it!

South Florida at #14 Georgetown, 10am, ESPNU
#2 Syracuse at St. John's, 11am, ESPN
Detroit at Butler, 11am, ESPN2
Vanderbilt at #11 Florida, noon, CBS (check your local listings)
#15/15 Marquette at Notre Dame, noon, CBS (check your local listings)

Boston College at Georgia Tech, noon, ESPN2
#3 Ohio State at #20 Wisconsin, 1pm, ESPN
Temple at Rhode Island, 1pm, ESPN2
Penn State at Iowa, 2pm, ESPNU
#6 North Carolina at Maryland, 3pm, ESPN

#13 UNLV at Wyoming, 3pm, The MTN
Middle Tennessee at Denver, 3pm, ESPN2
New Mexico at Boise State, 3pm, NBC Sports Network
Old Dominion at George Mason, 4pm, ESPNU
Air Force at Colorado State, 4pm, CBS Sports Network

#1 Kentucky at South Carolina, 5pm, ESPN
Iowa State at Oklahoma, 5pm, ESPN2
#20 Indiana at Purdue, 6pm, Big Ten Network
Richmond at Duquesne, 6pm, ESPNU
Mississippi at Alabama, 7pm, ESPN2

#8 Kansas at #4 Missouri, 8pm, ESPN
UC-Santa Barbara at Cal State Fullerton, 8pm, ESPNU
Indiana State at Wichita State, 9pm, ESPN2

Marquette heads back out onto the court at the Al McGuire Center tomorrow night to take on the Pittsburgh Panthers. Tip off will be at 7pm. For those of you unable to make it to the AMC, the game will be streamed on GoMarquette.com with Kyle Dlabay and Armen Saryan on the call.

It will also be the Golden Eagles' yearly Pink Out game in support of breast cancer awareness. The team will be outfitted in pink uniforms and the coaches, cheerleaders and band will also be wearing pink in some fashion. Spectators are of course encouraged to wear pink as well. For more on the event, you can visit the official page on GoMarquette.com.

Pittsburgh (8-14, 0-9 Big East) has lost 8 straight and has yet to win a true road game this season. This probably shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, as the Panthers have a roster consisting of two redshirt sophomores, four true sophomores and six freshmen. Two Panthers average in double digits in scoring: freshman guard Brianna Kiesel at 13.0 per game and redshirt sophomore guard Ashlee Anderson at 10.5 per game. Kiesel also leads the team in assists with 3.3 per game. Given her statistical dominance within her team, it's not surprising that Kiesel is one of just two Panthers to start every one of Pitt's 22 games.

You might remember that about a month ago, our formerly fearless leader and perpetual Nattering Nabob of Negativity, Rubie Q, took his talents to the nursery. The post was too long for me to read front to back, but from the little bit that I skimmed, I gathered the following: something something twins something something busy babies diapers something something lazy something something sabbatical.

Anyway, Rubie's sabbatical started January 6, 2012.

Then, about a week later, this happened:

Danny Pudi, as you probably know, is one of the most famous Marquette basketball fans alive, in addition to being the funniest half-Polish, half-Indian actor in the history of Hollywood. He's also on Community, which doesn't really have much to do with this story, other than giving me an excuse to link to this gif of Alison Brie running.

With the news of the birth of the Babies Pudi, a couple of enterprising amateur Columbos tried to connect the dots:

• Rubie takes a break from the blog on January 6 because his wife is having twins.
  
• Rubie is a Marquette basketball fan.
• Rubie's name isn't actually Rubie.
• Danny Pudi's wife gives birth to twins on January 12.
• DANNY PUDI IS A MARQUETTE BASKETBALL FAN, TOO.

The whispers started soon after, gained some steam, and then finally reached a fever pitch: Could it be that the man behind the Rubie Q curtain is actually mega-superstar Danny Pudi?

We mobilized the Anonymous Eagle Bureau of Nonsensical Investigations to get to the bottom of things.

After the jump, the investigation continues: is Rubie Q actually Danny Pudi?

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A couple days back, on the heels of the epically awful Michigan State-Illinois rock fight that ended in a 42-41 Illini victory, Shane Ryan wrote a post at Grantland's The Triangle blog advocating the introduction of a 24-second shot clock in college basketball. The thesis of the post, in a nutshell: the number of possessions in the average college basketball has fallen steadily since the late 1990s, and during that same time frame, there's also been a significant (though probably not precipitous) drop in scoring. Ryan attempts to tie those two facts together, and argues that the increase in pace forced by a 24-second shot clock would go far to restoring the luster that Ryan feels is lacking from the college game.

It's a superficially intriguing argument, I suppose, but among the myriad problems with the thesis -- for example: (1) correlation (lower possessions and lower scoring since 1997) isn't necessarily causation (lower possessions = lower scoring); (2) decreasing the shot clock wouldn't have made the Michigan State-Illinois game any prettier, it just would've meant more missed shots; and (3) it wholly disregards the detrimental effect one-and-dones are having on the quality of the college game: scores are lower, in part, because a lot of the really good players pop in for a season and then bail for the NBA -- is the fact that Ryan uses Wisconsin as his example of the team that's destroying college basketball with a plodding pace.

I'm loathe to dismiss another man's distaste for Bo and the Badgers, of course, but it seems than Shane Ryan has a particularly sharp burr up his ass when it comes to Buckyball -- you might recall his earlier essay declaring the Badgers The Most Boring Team in America after UW nearly went all tortoise-and-the-hare in a game against UNC in Chapel Hill -- and that bias points his argument about tempo in college basketball in the wrong direction.

You want to see a team that's ruining college basketball with tempo? Don't bother with Madison, where the Badgers at least have the decency to run an offense while they're bleeding out the shot clock. Look towards South Bend, Indiana.

Let's talk about the nauseating "burn" offense, after the jump.

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We had three Big East games last night and somehow, none of them qualify under the heading of Bizarro Big East.

• #14/14 Georgetown 58, Connecticut 44. The Huskies shot 30% for the game while Hollis Thompson ZZZZZZZZZZZ. Marquette's only played 4 games this season that was as slow or slower than this game. Where was I? Oh, right. Thompson scored 18 points and pulled down 9 rebounds for the Hoyas. UConn falls to 4-5 in Big East play while Georgetown's 7-3 record has them alone in third place for the time being. I think it's safe to say that UConn's not going to recapture the magic of last season.
  
• Providence 78, Rutgers 67. Vincent Council scored all 11 of his points and dished out 10 of his 14 assists in the first half to get the Friars out to a 40-26 halftime lead. While this is just Providence's second Big East win, it was in the Dunkin' Donuts Center, so we can't be surprised that they took down an erratic Scarlet Knights team.
• St. John's 87, DePaul 81. The Blue Demons found a way to lose again, giving up an 11-0 run to throw away a double digit lead down to just 1 point at the half and then coughing up an 8 point lead to a 13-0 Red Storm run. D'Angelo Harrison's mean face scared DePaul into letting him score a game high 29 points, largely because of 7-11 three point shooting.

Marquette's women's basketball team dropped their fourth consecutive game last night with a 64-52 loss to Cincinnati. Katherine Plouffe led the way for Marquette (12-10, 3-6 Big East) by posting her eighth double-double of the season with 12 points and 13 rebounds. Dayeesha Hollins led the way for Cincinnati (11-11, 2-7 Big East) with 22 points.

Things started out slow, with the first basket not coming until the 17:03 mark of the first half when UC's Bjonee Reaves drained a three pointer. The teams would trade baskets and leads for the next 7 minutes until Jeanise Randolph put back a Chanel Chisholm miss to give Cincy an 11-10 lead and the Bearcats would never trail again.

Sarina Simmons hit an and-1 free throw with 14:37 left in the game to tie the score at 35. But Marquette shot just 31% in the second half while missing all eight threes they attempted and Cincinnati closed the game out by outscoring Marquette 29-17.

Let's hit some highlights and then meet back up after the jump for Four Factors, Awards and Whimsy:

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